{"id":13344,"date":"2018-09-06T03:40:15","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T07:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=13344"},"modified":"2018-09-06T03:59:55","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T07:59:55","slug":"brick-mua-computer-breach-did-not-put-customers-at-risk-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2018\/09\/brick-mua-computer-breach-did-not-put-customers-at-risk-officials-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Brick MUA Computer Breach Did Not Put Customers at Risk, Officials Say"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority, BTMUA (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

A recent cyber breach at the Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority did not place any customer account information at risk, nor did it affect the safety of the township\u2019s water supply, officials said.<\/p>\n

The utilities agency suffered a strike by a \u201ctrojan horse\u201d virus on Aug. 23 that is thought to have infected the system through an e-mail account. Because the BTMUA is a water-sewer provider, the breach has elicited attention from state and federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n

The good news, however, is that an investigation showed the agency\u2019s firewalls worked correctly and fended off the virus from servers that hold private account and billing information, according to Executive Director Christopher A. Theodos.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt affected our business network such as our e-mail,\u201d said Theodos. \u201cIt had no impact on customer accounts. Our computer staff is working with cyber security experts to bring everything back online safely. They\u2019ve assured us there was no breach in data.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agency\u2019s online billing system had been down but was restored earlier this week. Its e-mail system remains inoperable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had numerous firewalls that stopped the progress of the virus,\u201d said Theodos. \u201cThe firewalls were very effective and prevented any data loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

The involvement of federal and state homeland security offices was largely a precautionary measure, Theodos said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are agencies that specialize in cyber security issues and that\u2019s why they came,\u201d he said. \u201cThe only restriction we now have is e-mail, but of course we can be reached by phone or fax.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trojan horse viruses usually arrive as an e-mail attachment that appears to be a legitimate file from a trusted contact, however once the file is opened, the virus application begins to run and can infect an entire computer or server. Such attacks have occasionally been directed toward government agencies, including police departments and state governments. Most recently, an Alaska suburb took the step of declaring a state of emergency<\/a> after its systems were decimated in an attack.<\/p>\n

In Brick\u2019s case, the firewalls that were already in place helped avert such a disaster, officials said.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent cyber breach at the Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority did not place any customer account information at risk, nor did it affect the safety of the township\u2019s water supply, officials said. The utilities agency suffered a strike by a \u201ctrojan horse\u201d virus on Aug. 23 that is thought to have infected the system […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,1713,269,3448,3449],"class_list":["post-13344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-brick-township-municipal-utilities-authority","tag-btmua","tag-cyber-breach","tag-cyber-security"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/btmua.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-3te","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}